


Midnight

by HopeStoryteller



Series: stay close (move fast) [4]
Category: Zombies Run!
Genre: Assumed Relationship, Crying, F/M, Female Runner Five, Mutual Pining, Not Really Character Death, Pining, Pre-Relationship, immediately after S1M23, y'know the season 1 finale, you know if you've played it trust me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-18
Updated: 2020-05-18
Packaged: 2021-03-02 22:40:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,567
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24254506
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HopeStoryteller/pseuds/HopeStoryteller
Summary: Sometimes, uncertainty can be worse than knowing for sure one way or the other. Schrödinger's cat, except with an entire township instead of a cat in a box. Is the township okay? Or is the township wiped off the face of the map, and everyone with it?All Five can do now is hold on, hold on, hold on. She can't bring herself to hope that he's alive. The closest she can come is hoping that he at least died quickly.
Relationships: Runner Five & Everyone, Runner Five/Sam Yao
Series: stay close (move fast) [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1698457
Comments: 10
Kudos: 17





	Midnight

Five does not go to New Canton. Not immediately, in any case. She crosses relatively close, enough to ditch Lem’s headset in the bushes but far enough away to stay off their operator’s cameras, and tries not to think too hard about her operator. If she thinks about him right now, she’s going to break down, and she can’t afford to break down now.

Then she goes looking for someone, anyone. There had been other runners out, and maybe, just maybe, they won’t have shared Eight’s fate.

(She tries not to think of Eight either. She just grips the machete Eight had given her, and runs.)

* * *

She finds Four first. Or perhaps more accurately, Four finds her.

 _“You lot were part of the horde, I bet,”_ is what she should say. _“Come and get me, you bastards. I’ve got a weapon with your names written all over it.”_

But her mouth doesn’t work, no noise comes out. She jumps up and down, stomps her feet instead. That does the trick nearly as well. Three zoms coming for her, and nothing but a bloody machete to defend herself with.

She swings for the first, cleaves its head clean off its shoulders. The second stumbles right through it, quite _literally_ through its falling comrade as if it’s too impatient for tasty runner brains to wait a few seconds, and reaches for her covered in the decaying guts and fraying skin of the first. Five nearly slices it in half, kicks it back when it lurches for her, and tries again from top to bottom.

The third zombie doesn’t even get the chance to come for her. By the time Five’s returned all her attention to it, it’s taken a fire axe to the chest and toppled to the ground. The axe’s wielder yanks it out and cuts off its head, and only when it stops moving does she breathe a sigh of relief.

“Hi, Five!” Four says in a tone too chipper to not be forced. “You have _no idea_ how glad I am to see you. You’re… you’re not bit, are you?”

Five shakes her head. Takes a deep breath, and tries to make the words work. They don’t, so she just shakes her head again. Opens her mouth. Shuts it. Helplessly offers up the machete.

“That’s…” Four takes a closer look at it. “That’s Eight’s, isn’t it? Is she… oh god.”

“Still alive when I last saw her,” Five chokes out.

 _But not for long,_ is the unspoken truth Four knows too now.

“Bitten?”

Five nods. Sticks the machete back into her belt as Four raises a hand to her headset.

“This is Abel Township Runner Four. If anyone can hear me…” She shakes her head, blinks hard. “If anyone can hear me, I’m not dead yet, and I’ve just found Five. Eight’s gone. Sam, are you there? Janine? Come in, _please._ ”

There’s nothing. Nothing on Four’s headset, and nothing on Five’s either. Five can only hear Four because she’s two feet away from her.

Four lets her hand fall, looks to Five. “Our headsets might not work, but… we can find the others. The other runners out distracting the horde, if any of them are still alive. Eight and Six are… gone. But Three might still be up on that pavilion Seven mentioned? And Seven… did he say where he was going?”

Five shakes her head.

“Then let’s start with Three.”

* * *

Three lets out a whoop of joy when Five and Four see him, and when he sees them. He seems to be very much alive and very much relieved, and also stuck atop a pavilion with about forty zoms all jumping up at him but not quite able to reach.

“You have no bloody _idea_ how glad I am to see you!” Three calls.

“Yeah, yeah, save it for when we get you down from there,” Four calls back. A couple zombies notice fresh, more easily accessible meat, and start shambling over. “Hey, Five, you still have your noisemaker?”

Right. Five had completely forgotten about that. She finds it in a side pocket of her pack, pulls it out, switches it on. Four does the same with her own, and suddenly there’s a lot more interested zoms than a couple. More like a couple dozen. Couple baker’s dozen even.

“I’ve got an idea!” Four yells. “Five, run around the pavilion with me, get their attention, and _be sodding careful!”_

Five nods, and runs.

* * *

By the time their headsets come back online, they’ve gotten Three down and been joined by a rapidly tiring but relieved Seven. The group of four’s managed to lose the zombies, and climbed up onto the roof of an apartment complex to think.

Personally, the last thing Five would like to be doing is thinking, but here they are.

“It’s entirely possible that we’re all that’s left of Abel now,” Seven says grimly. “At _best_ , that rocket launcher Eight and Five saw knocked out our radio tower. Our headsets will need to be manually reconnected when… if things get set back up. At worst…”

“On the headset that… well, you know,” Five says. “The New Canton radio operator said there was nothing left of Abel. Admittedly, she was saying that to get the runner pretending to be _her_ runner to come in, and… yeah.”

“I think we can all agree,” Three says after a moment, “that if we _are_ for some odd reason considering New Canton as a viable option, it should go without saying that _we don’t know who had that headset.”_

“Agreed,” Four says emphatically.

“Of course,” Seven agrees. “We know _someone_ was using it, but it was kept secret exactly who it was.”

“That’s not even _that_ much of a stretch, really! That’s how it was outside the runners!”

“I think I heard… something, too,” Five says after a long moment and blinking back a few more tears than she’d like. “Admittedly, I might have a concussion? But it sounded almost like someone was… interfering, with the broadcast?”

“Someone from New Canton?” Three asks.

“No, this was someone interfering _with_ New Canton’s broadcast. They—she? Knew who I was, and said I could stop running. I don’t think she realized there were quite a few zombies shambling on behind me, and she didn’t say anything _else_ so I just… looked for the rest of you.”

“That’s… very interesting,” Seven says thoughtfully. “Did she give a name?”

“Major de Santa.”

All three of the other runners here make various sounds of recognition. Four looks visibly relieved, Three pumps a fist in the air, and Seven? Seven just nods.

“You arrived after she left, didn’t you? That would be the Major, Abel’s real leader. _Janine’s_ boss. Been away for quite some time, but if she’s back… maybe the township isn’t gone after all.”

“But maybe it is,” Four says uneasily, “and maybe the Major was broadcasting from somewhere else, and if we go back all we’ll find are the zombified corpses of our friends.”

Three and Five exchange glances and wince. Almost as they do, there’s static on all four Abel headsets, and then a voice in the afternoon twilight.

 _“Abel Township runners,”_ someone says. A female voice. The New Canton radio operator. Nadia? Nadia. _“Calling all Abel Township runners. Do you read? Can you hear me?”_

It’s staticky, but yes—they all can hear her. Looks are exchanged for a few, tersely silent seconds, and eventually settle on Seven. He _is_ the Head of Runners, after all. With no one else here…

Seven presses in the talk button on his headset. “This is Abel Township’s Runner Seven. Who is this?”

Brief silence. Seven releases the talk button, looks to Five. “Is that the New Canton radio operator?”

Five nods. In better times, she might have made a joke about her being the Sam to New Canton, but… well, it’s not better times. It’s getting dark, they’re all holed up on the roof of a long-abandoned apartment building nobody’s entirely sure is free of zombies, and they can’t risk a fire with the remnants of the horde all out and about.

The operator clears her throat. _“This is Nadia Al Hanaki, New Canton communications. Your settlement is as good as destroyed.”_

“As good as doesn’t mean it _is_ destroyed,” Seven says with a hint of danger to his words.

_“You’re right. I can’t tell for sure on my long-range cameras, there could be survivors, but the site is currently a smoking husk and every zombie within about a mile has been attracted to it.”_

“I wonder why,” Three mutters, not quietly enough.

_“Abel Runner Seven. Do you have anyone with you?”_

“I do,” Seven says. “Abel Runners Three, Four, and Five.”

There’s a sound like the shuffling of paper. _“Right. Do you know what destroyed Abel Township?”_

“Zombies.”

_“Zombies don’t make buildings explode.”_

“Runners Five and Eight saw a group of zombies carrying a rocket launcher right before it went down. I would trust either of them with my life.”

_“…right. Where is your Runner Eight?”_

“Dead. Five is with me. Abel Township was blown up by a group of the living dead carrying a rocket launcher. The only reason I’m telling _you_ this is because New Canton could easily be next.”

 _“I doubt it,”_ Nadia scoffs, but she doesn’t sound as confident as she did. _“I have orders from the Permanent Advisory Council to offer any survivors of your township asylum in New Canton, if you desire it. However, I have a question. One of your runners was wearing one of our headsets. Was it any of the runners with you?”_

Five looks uneasily at Seven.

“No,” Seven says, and if Five didn’t know better she’d swear he was telling the truth. “I don’t believe so, in any case. We’ve all been aware that _someone_ was wearing that headset, but it’s been kept under wraps who exactly it was.”

The lie is flawless. And yet, for a time, Five is terrified that Nadia’s seen straight through it.

“That’s unfortunate,” Nadia says at last. “Very well then. Abel Runners Three, Four, Five, and Seven: I do not have visual on your current location but I _do_ have a map. If you’re able to identify where you currently are, I can bring you in.”

* * *

New Canton isn’t terrible. New Canton certainly isn’t the horrible dystopia that it had been painted to be, and part of Five—Ninety-Three—Ramona feels horribly guilty over even thinking it’s not that bad. Maybe it really isn’t that bad, but Sam had certainly thought it was, and Sam is… probably gone.

There _has_ to be something she could have done to prevent it. There _has_ to have been _something_ , and yet she can’t think of anything at all. She hopes he died quickly, relatively painlessly, before the zombies could get to him.

She didn’t get attached. She _didn’t get attached._ And yet she did, and she’d feel worse if she’d ever actually done anything. If she’d ever actually told him, _hey, I think you’re a dork but you're a cute dork, wanna kiss or something?_ She knows, she _knows_ this only would have been worse. She only would have felt _worse_.

And yet she can hardly imagine feeling _worse_ than she already does now. Sam was supposed to be _safe_ , or as safe as one could get in the middle of the zombie apocalypse. Sam should have been safe, and…

Well. She just tries to hope he died quickly, and it didn’t hurt for long. That’s the best you can hope for, sometimes, and it’s the best she dares to hope for even as more survivors from Abel trickle in, as word spreads that Abel may not have been entirely destroyed.

(“They’re not gone,” Jody says one day, the day after the two of them are reassigned as New Canton Runners Ninety-Two and Ninety-Three. “Abel’s not gone. Not as long as someone’s still alive that remembers Abel and remembers them.”)

(“I know,” Ramona replies. She meets Jody’s eyes with her own and says, softer, “But I… miss them.”)

(“We all do,” Jody agrees. “At least New Canton isn’t our enemy anymore. I’m not sure we could fight Van Ark _and_ New Canton.”)

(“If it meant we’d still have Abel…”)

It’s nearly a week after Abel fell when Five sees Major de Santa for the first time. She comes with a large group of Abel refugees, the largest yet, although Five only has eyes for a very few specific individuals.

She finds Maxine fairly quickly, exhausted but alive and more unhurt than most. With her, with his arm in a sling and limping but very much not dead and not undead, is someone she’d never actually thought she’d see again. Someone she’d… given up for dead, hoped he’d died quickly so at least it would hurt less, and _damn_ her heart for being so happy and being a goddamn traitor to the rest of her body.

Jody elbows her meaningfully, loops an arm around Maxine’s and says, “You’ll be super impressed with the medical equipment they’ve got here, Maxie! Come on!”

Maxine looks at Five, looks at Sam, looks at Jody. “Of… course! Let’s go check it out…”

“They have something called a plasmapheresis machine? No idea what it _does_ but it _looks_ super cool!”

And then they’re gone, and Five's left alone with the man she’d thought she’d lost. She’d already resigned herself to never seeing him again, except _here he is_. And now it’s so, so hard to stay quiet. So _much_ harder even. There’s so much she wants to say, and she already knows she never will. Even if he liked her back, there’s… well, there’s a reason very few of Ramona’s relationships pre-apocalypse lasted long.

“Uh… hi,” Sam says awkwardly. He waves with his free hand. “How are you doing, Mona? Five?”

“It’s Ninety-Three here,” Five says in return.

Sam wrinkles his nose. “Ninety- _Three?_ How many runners—“

“Ninety, I’m pretty sure. Simon’s Ninety-One, Jody’s Ninety-Two, Evan’s Ninety-Four…”

“Right, yeah, because it’s a _great_ idea to call someone sprinting for their life something completely unfamiliar.” Sam sighs, shakes his head. “But seriously, how are you… are you doing alright?”

Five stares at him for a full ten seconds. Then she goes, “You’re asking _me_ that?”

“No, I’m asking the invisible runner behind you— _yes_ I’m asking you that!”

 _“Sam._ You _can’t_ be serious.”

“Well, I am currently, so…”

“Not what I—“ Five groans. “Sam, you’re the one with your _arm in a sling_. And you were at Abel when—when I—“

Something wet trickles down her face. She raises a hand to it, rubs her eyes, and only then fully registers that she’s crying.

“It’s not… _badly_ broken, it’ll be fine in several weeks,” Sam says softly. He places his hand over hers, holds it to her face. “I’m not exactly fine myself, but… well, I’m doing okay. I’m not a zom, so that’s definitely good! And I’m glad you made it here okay, when comms went down I thought maybe…”

“Again,” Five manages, “not the one who got hit with a rocket launcher.”

Sam smiles. “I guess we should all be glad that zoms have terrible aim.”

“Yeah.” She smiles back. “Yeah, I… guess we should.”

She’ll never tell him, and that’s alright. For the moment, she’s just glad to have him back.

**Author's Note:**

> Not to be dramatic but I would actually die for Sam. If he gets killed later on I swear I am _going_ to completely break thanks, and that'll most likely be where this series diverges from canon if it does. Anyway, I put off doing the race missions for ages because I didn't want to run _that much_ but I figured they filled in the dots between New Canton and Abel being a lot less hostile between the end of S1 and the beginning of S2? And then they didn't, I looked up transcripts. So... what else is fanfiction for, if not to fill in the pieces that canon doesn't and occasionally/often replace parts we don't like? :)


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